What Time Is Your Facebook Sweet Spot?

By Mikal E. Belicove|For Entrepreneur.com|October 19, 2011

You’ve just added a status update to your Facebook business page, and, so far, you’ve received 57 Likes and about dozen comments on both the blog post it focuses on and the Facebook status update itself.

The question is, how long is this online euphoria going to last? Will your update continue to attract comments and Likes well into the foreseeable future? Highly unlikely, says Jeff Widman, co-founder of PageLever, a Mountain View, Calif.-based startup that makes analytics and metrics tools for Facebook pages. In fact, if Widman’s prognosticating is correct, you’ve got a shade less than 23 hours to bask in the active attention that that Facebook post is attracting.

Whether you’re promoting a blog post, introducing a new product or service or enticing potential fans with contests, coupons or causes, it’s important to know that you only have a limited amount of time to make your mark. As status updates don’t remain in the Facebook Newsfeed for long, devising a timing strategy for how often to post new items to your Facebook page should be a priority. Here are Widman’s findings, which could help guide you toward crafting an optimal timetable for updating your Facebook status:

Widman co-founded PageLever to help companies including YouTube, MTV, Microsoft and others drive more fans, traffic, comments and Newsfeed impressions to their Facebook pages. Earlier this month, he compiled information on the life of the average Facebook status update from an informal study he conducted using a very small sample. And by small, we’re talking only 20 status updates from five pages (certainly not representative of all Facebook posts). However, each of these pages has more than…